


And A Steady Blue Stream

by Anna_Hopkins



Series: Elixir!verse [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Hallucinogens, Hogwarts Fifth Year, Light Angst, Potions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 17:13:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13663581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_Hopkins/pseuds/Anna_Hopkins
Summary: (Sequel to my oneshot, "The Elixir of Endless Dreams")Snape has kept his use of the Elixir quiet, up until now. Is it really any surprise that the Golden Trio is behind this incident?





	And A Steady Blue Stream

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Elixir of Endless Dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8426683) by [Anna_Hopkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_Hopkins/pseuds/Anna_Hopkins). 



> I wrote this a bit out of the blue. It may or may not get a sequel in the future. Feel free to message me on Tumblr: annabelle-hopkins.tumblr.com ☺

_“…the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins,  
bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…”_

The Potions Master walks a delicate line in the mornings after using the Elixir. He is serene, but cannot _appear_ as such: if he slips from the role he plays here, everywhere, it could mean death. Yet the significance of that is lost on him during the first few hours of the day, for he returns to the waking world with the detached amusement of a Greek deity playing amongst mortals, believing – despite all logic – that the waking world is the real dream. This is the only drawback he has found to using the Elixir: apathy.

As yet, no one has ever fully uncovered the truth of his dream-adventures – not Albus, not the Dark Lord, not his unsavory coworkers (on either side). Hopefully, he thinks, they will never know. He would rather be thought a drug addict, as the Inner Circle thinks, or a half-madman, as the Order seems to think, than be known for his Elixir.

All is well until Potter steals the bottle from its cabinet.

 

Snape has just finished brewing the latest batch of the Elixir – a process that yields just one bottle’s worth, and costs nearly half his annual salary – when the Gryffindor shows up for Occlumency lessons. (Oh, woe; so many hours wasted already.) The boy wrinkles his nose at the lingering fumes. “What’s that smell, sir?” he asks.

“A difficult potions experiment,” the master brewer replies, offhand, and begins the lesson. If only Legilimency and Occlumency _could_ be taught with only books, he would not have to suffer the boy’s presence nearly so often, thinks Snape, eyeing the fifth-year with a distaste he knows is mutual. Every lesson is the same: he sifts through Potter’s memories, giving only a cursory glance to anything, till he finds the dream-vision that provokes the most anger in the boy, and brings it forward, expecting another failure to defend himself –

 _Protego!_ Potter shouts telepathically, and he is thrown back against the wall of his office. The door to the laboratory opens beside him; apparently, it wasn’t as closed as Snape had thought. He pulls a headache draught from his pocket to stave off the pain until later, and closes the door before returning to the center of the room. “Next time,” he says quietly, annoyed, “limit your use of magic to the mind arts.”

With the boy sufficiently cowed, the session continues, making minimal progress, and Potter leaves in the same mood as he always does. Snape turns his attention to the schedule for the evening and the next day; the Gryffindor boy’s thoughts, meanwhile, are trained on the pomegranate fumes from the mysterious potions experiment.

 

A long while has passed since his last dose of Elixir; with Umbridge on the prowl, he cannot afford to show any weaknesses. The night of Halloween, he returns to his quarters after the Feast, and unlatches the cabinet – the other staff will cover for him tonight, while he observes the anniversary of Lily’s death –

The bottle is not where it should be.

Someone has _taken_ his Elixir.

 _This cannot be happening,_ he tells himself, _I must have simply misplaced the bottle,_ but he has certainly not done that. Snape casts all the detection spells he knows, seeking traces of magical signatures that he can latch onto. The only signatures other than his own are…

Rage swells in his chest, and a dozen empty vials shatter spontaneously. Of _course_ it is the _Golden Trio_ that has snuck into his private quarters and stolen his most valuable possession. Damn the Unbreakable Vow to hell – if only it were a lesser vow, he would recant it this very moment in retribution, and burn them alive for their actions. But no, he made an _Unbreakable Vow_ to protect the boy, and what an idiotic move that had been…

The Potions Master sits down on his bed, taking several deep breaths, before reaching for a Calming Draught from his nightstand drawer. It is one of his modified batch: where regular draughts merely put a blanket of calm over the emotions one is feeling, this version turns them off entirely. A momentary chill washes over him, and then Snape is able to consider his options.

First, to find the three of them – for, doubtless, all three have tried the Elixir, or else he would already have been summoned to Albus’ office to deal with this – and determine whether they followed the directions on the label correctly. He would have felt a bit of pleasure at his forethought in labelling the Elixir with dosage information, now that it was finally useful, were his emotions not disabled. As it were, he calls for a house-elf. “Please find Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ronald Weasley for me, and inform me of their location when you return.”

Ten minutes later, he is on his way to the Room of Requirement; the children had evidently not asked the Room to prevent others from entering, for his request – _Give me the room where Potter, Granger and Weasley are_ – provides a door without further difficulty. Severus crosses the threshold into a large tower room that is probably the Gryffindor dormitory in replica; lo and behold, there lie the three of them, on separate beds, clearly already under the Elixir’s spell. A night-table by Granger’s bed holds the Elixir, and beside it, _Gwendolyn Garrith’s Guide to Shorthand Potions Labels_. It has been bookmarked on the “dosage instructions” section with a leaf of parchment that translated the symbols from the Elixir’s label into longhand English.

 _Granger’s saving grace,_ he muses, skimming the parchment, _is her meticulous notetaking._ She had dosed them correctly, it appeared, and probably dosed herself afterward.

He checks the time. About seven hours before the Gryffindors awoke; what to do for damage control? Could he convince the three of them to keep this a secret? What will they demand in return? Setting a timer for an hour before they would likely awaken, he turns on his heel and departs the Room. Whatever happens, his quarters are not nearly secure enough for his liking, and a search of his private stores would yield too many borderline-illegal potions and ingredients…

 

Ultimately, Severus spends his Halloween night in and out of the Floo between his quarters and Spinner’s End, moving nearly everything he’s ever brewed into the Fidelius-charmed storage room beyond his house wards. The influence of the modified calming draught is beginning to wane by the time the timer goes off, just before dawn; he pauses to down another one, after considering the overlapping dosage. On returning to the Room, he finds the children beginning to stir, just as calculated; on closer inspection, the Potions Master notices a curious discrepancy between the three of them, one worth noting for later.

Early on in experimenting with the Elixir, several weeks of careful measurements led to the discovery that the longer one dreamed under the Elixir’s influence, the greater the volume of dark-blue ‘tears’ on one’s face when they awoke. Going by this, Granger, it seems, is not one for dream adventures: a single trail of blue has slipped out the corner of her left eye. The red-haired Weasley boy is a bit more imaginative, apparently, with several streaks down his cheeks.

But Potter’s face looks more like Severus’ own; his pillow is stained, blue pooling at the sides of his head, and of the three, he seems the least willing to wake up. The other two Gryffindors are twitching as they regain consciousness; the only indication from Potter that he is waking up, however, is a minute twitching of the eyelids. Something about the boy’s stillness registers as ‘concerning’ to the Potions Master despite the calming draught. He recasts a Disillusionment and Notice-Me-Not charm combination, and leans back against the wall by Potter’s bed, eyeing the boy suspiciously.

Unsurprisingly, the first thing the Golden Sidekicks do when they wake up is go over to Potter’s bed. “Harry?” Granger’s voice is soft with concern. “Are you awake?”

The boy doesn’t acknowledge her question; his eyes are half-lidded and dazed. This clearly unnerves Granger, and she shakes his shoulder gently, calling to him. Finally, he speaks in a whisper, and his eyes swivel, expression impassive. “…’Mione.”

“Are you all right, Harry?” Granger picks up a bowl and rag that appear on the nightstand and fills the bowl with water from her wand, wiping at her friend’s cheeks. “Oh, we shouldn’t have ever touched that bottle in Professor Snape’s room, what were we _thinking_?”

“Yeah, mate,” Weasley chimes in. He sounds pensive, restrained, compared to what Snape has come to expect out of that family of Gryffindors. “The dungeon bat’s gonna have our heads for this. All that worry over a dream potion, even Dumbledore won’t get us out of detention for a month.”

The two of them keep prattling on, about what they expect Snape to do in retribution; but Potter almost seems to be ignoring them. Slowly, he sits up, wiping his eyes on the back of his sleeve, and reaches for his glasses. In a lull in their monologues, he finally asks, “Did both of you have a dream, then?”

The other children nod.

“Funny,” Potter murmurs, staring at the ceiling, “Everything seems so much clearer now. How long did your dreams go on?” He looks back at his friends, who seem confused by the question, but answer anyway.

“I was in my room at home,” Granger thinks aloud, “for about a day, I think? I told my parents all the things I haven’t gotten to say in my letter, and had lunch, and when I realized it was a dream, I woke up.”

“Weird,” Weasley comments. “About a month passed for me. I was at the Burrow in the summer, and Mum would make me whatever I wanted for every meal. I got all my favourites, and flew Quidditch with Fred and George and Bill and Charlie and Ginny most every afternoon. When Mum made roast beef for the third meal in a row, I realized it was a dream, too, and woke up.”

Snape scrutinizes Potter’s expression as he processes this information. There is something lurking under the surface, something only a Slytherin would notice. “I think we’d better speak to Snape before breakfast,” he says, “and give him the potion back. I’m glad it wasn’t anything dangerous, but it seems expensive.” Somewhat thrown by his gentle tone of voice, they hastily agree, and pack up their things.

Snape follows them out without being noticed, and intercepts them at the door to his office a few minutes later, walking from a different direction in the dungeons. “Potter. Granger. Weasley,” he snaps, feigning irritability. “It is too early for curfew to end. Explain yourselves.”

Before his lackeys can say anything, Potter steps forward, holding the Elixir in his hands. “Sir,” he says – and Snape freezes, caught off guard by the respectful tone, as do Granger and Weasley – “I stole this from your potions cabinet last night. I made Ron and Hermione help me, but they aren’t responsible for my actions.” He pauses, then adds, “I shouldn’t have taken it from you. I’m sorry.”

Shock is evident on the lackeys’ expressions; Severus accepts the Elixir back from the boy without admonishing him. Thinking quickly, he addresses the trio. “This is a volatile, experimental elixir. Exposure to its contents in any way, including inhaling the vapors or touching the underside of the stopper, may cause unknown symptoms. If you notice _anything_ out of the ordinary in the next twelve hours, you will come directly to me. Am I understood?” The children nod nearly in unison. “Then, Miss Granger, Mister Weasley, you will return to your Common Room and go about your day. Potter, my office.”

Shooting nervous glances at their friend, the redhead and the girl turn and leave.

 

When he closes the door behind him a moment later, Potter is standing in the center of his office, watching him with those eerie, dead eyes again. Snape is still trying to identify the exact emotion behind them when the boy speaks again. “I never thanked you for saving me from Quirrel in first year,” he says quietly. “Or for brewing the potions Madam Pomfrey uses on me every year.”

The boy breathes deeply, and the Potions Master recognizes a rudimentary attempt at Occlumentic self-control when he sees one. “I never thanked you for bothering to teach me Occlumency when you could have only pretended,” he continues. “I’ve only ever made your life difficult, and…I don’t deserve your forgiveness, sir, not for this, not for anything.”

Severus sees genuine remorse in Potter’s eyes; they do not shine with unshed tears, like he would have expected from a fifteen-year-old. The boy does not look much like a _boy_ at all, in this moment; in a way, he reminds the Potions Master of Albus Dumbledore, at those Order meetings where they gathered to mourn the dead. Detached from reality as Snape currently is, he still finds it unnerving.

“Ron, Hermione, and I took that elixir last night using the directions on the label,” Potter is saying. “Apparently, all three of us had long dreams. Hermione’s lasted a day, and Ron’s lasted a month. They said they woke up when they realized they were dreaming.” Snape nods, a gesture to continue. When the boy speaks again, his voice is trembling.

“I…my dream wasn’t like theirs, sir. I woke up in a graveyard; it stretched as far as the eye could see. No matter how long I walked, I never saw the end of it. Every once in a while, there was a tree, and it had just enough fruit for me to survive on, so I could keep walking. The gravestones got older and older, till they just had the years, and then they were just rocks, getting flatter and flatter, and eventually there was nothing there at all, but I still knew there were bodies below the ground.

“At some point I started thinking about where I was, what I was doing, and I became aware that I was truly alone. I knew I’d been walking for ages, but I didn’t really notice it. Finally, I found a tree that didn’t have fruit on it – I could see the next tree up ahead, and it had fruit, so I knew I hadn’t gone in a circle – but I stopped there, under the tree, and lay down against the trunk to rest. I realized I didn’t have to keep going; if I stayed there, and didn’t get up to eat, the tree would grow around me, and I could disappear.”

Snape shudders at the idea of it, but Potter doesn’t notice. “I _did_ that, sir. I laid back and rested against the tree, and watched the sun rise and set for a month, no matter how hungry I was, till I couldn’t have gotten up from the tree even if I’d wanted to. I closed my eyes for the last time… _and woke up here_.”

The boy fixed his gaze on Severus’. “I was _dead_ , Professor, and then I had to come back to _this_ world, and I realized what that potion was for the minute I opened my eyes – it’s _yours_ , and it’s not experimental at all. You perfected it _years_ ago.” His voice broke. “It’s an elixir of dreams, an elixir of _peace_.”

A streak of blue dripped down Potter’s cheek; he’d not properly washed the Elixir out of his eyes. “The only way you can get any peace, and I took it from you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”


End file.
